The forunner High Chief sat in his throne and awaited the status of the newly assembled fleet of forunner vessles. There were only about 1,200 in all, but the chief knew their force would be stronger once they loaded their infectious creatures that they made, onto their massive transports. A ball of light emmitted itself infront of the Chief's throne, and a voice came from it,"Your highness, we have run into complications." "Please do tell." The Chief spoke boldly. "There was a slight problem when we activated the monitor on Halo installation 001." The voice sounded from the small ball of light. "Repair it then, anything else?" "Your highness,"The voice paused,"The monitor, Code 343, took control of the transports we sent there, and stole the specimen's we were going to unleash upon The human world of Reach. The Monitor 343 then moved to the other two halo installations, and ravaged them., stealing the rest of our creatures." The Chief thought hard,"Where is the monitor's next destination?" The voice hesitated, then answered,"Reach sir. The Monitor sent us this message before he entered slipspace." 343 Guily Spark's voice appeared,"I can't thank you enough for giving me the co-ordinates to the planet that holds the Omega Device. I also thank you for giving me access to enough of, what I call, 'The Flood', to ravage the entire planet. Once I destroy every living thing on that planet, I am taking that device for myself. I bid you farewell!"The monitor chuckled a few times, then the transmission was cut. The normal voice from the light came back,"What do you suggest we do Your Highness?" "We need not wait any longer. Tell all the ships to prepare to enter slipspace. It appears that 343 will do the dirty work for us, and when he finishes the job, we will annihilate him and our specimins he calls the Flood." A hole in slipspace, the size of a sun, ripped open, and all the Forunner entered, destination: Reach.

The UNSC ships orbiting Aroura just regained communication with the suface. They'd sent in the Last team of WOD's down to the surface and investigate why their communications were being jammed. The WOD's found that a hijacked bomber was jamming the comunications, so they destroyed it. The command Bridge was in a frenzy now, they just lost contact of all the bombers one by one. "here the status sir,"An ensign handed the fleet comander the status,"They were shot down." "Great,"The commander said, looking out the view glass, at the beautiful bright planet of Aroura,"And now I'm supposed to call up Stanforth, and tell him that we just lost the finest pilots, to a bunch of rebels? Tell him that we are sending whatever we have left down to the surface to elliminate those pices of scum." "Yes sir." The ensign saluted, and paced out of the bridge. Five Pelicans in the loading bay fired up their engines. Normal armored marines ran into the ship's and took their seats. The Pelicans quickly accelerated out of the loading bay, and zoomed down towards the planet's surface. Even with 50 marines, they were still nervous, because whatever was down there, it elliminated a portion of the 24th Armored Division plus four Wings of Death. The Marines all clutched their assultrifles tightly, as the pelicans fired their landing thrusters. The sun was just starting to show it's light behind the mountians, as it began it's slow acent into the sky. The Pelicans all lowered to the ground, and the hatches opened. The Marines checked to see if the coast was clear, then they all cautiously crept out of the pelicans, and stayed low, while they ran across the open area, and hugged the wall. They ran around the other sides of the bulidings, and then proceeded inside. The Pelicans were instructed to stay and wait for the marines, so they let the landing thrusters stay on, allowing them to hover there, until they had to leave. The grassnext to one pelican moved a little, then the whole patch of grass around one Pelican errupted, and the SPARTANS and Keys sprung out from it, and ran into the back hatch of the pelican, and opened the cockpit door. The Pilot spun around"What the-"MC kneed him in the face and drug his body outside. The other pelican pilots noticed this, and franticly caled for the Marines inside. Keys grabbed the controls of their newly acquired pelican, and it began to fire it's main thrusters. The two SPARTANS in the back fired their MASP 8's on full auto at the other Pelicans and two of them exploded, as large chunks of the Transports tumbled everywhere. Their Pelican lifted from where they hovered, and unexpectedly accelerated quickly out from the area. "Where now?" Keys asked. Mendez woke up,"huh? Oh my god, I can't belive it's you guys. I heard you guys defected," Mendez sat up and shook MC's hand,"it's good to see you again 117-and everyone else." "We can save hello's for later,"The Master chief impatiently said,"We need to find a place to go, before te UNSC know what the hell is going on. They were now a planet away from Aroura, and were hoping the UNSC were still looking at their feet. Keys saw a comm light blink on the vid phone panel. Keys answered it, and it was Stanforth. "How's it goin Stanforth?" Keys said, and shut the door,"How's the news these days?" "I want to speak to you personally." Stanforth calmly said. Keys nodded, and locked the cockpit door, he then grabbed a disk, and put it in the vid phone port, a recording light came on,"what do you want?" "We know where you are, thats how I contacted you." Stanforth commented proudly. "So why aren't your men chasing us?" Keys asked him. Stanforth sighed,"...There's a reason why I didn't activate the super weapon..." "Care to explain?" Keys gravely asked, looking over at the recording light. "When I tried to insert the keys in the hole, something strange appeared,"Stanforth paused to recollect,"An enscription lit up on the key, and burt my hand. The enscription read 'When darkness blankets the wolrd, the time has come. Many will arrive, but only one will prevail'. After giving up on the meaning, I decided to keep it a secret. ONI never told you guys to keep it under wrap, I just told you and the others that. I figured since the whole Wings of Death wanted a portion of the goods, I decided to break the key, and give the pieces to all the pilots, until I figured out the puzzle. Now I have all but one piece, yours." Keys had heard all he needed to hear,"Have a nice day Stanforth." Keys blocked his number from ever talking to him on that certain channel. Keys pulled out the disk, and stuck it in his vest pocket, and unlocked the door. The MC came in,"Mendez needs to use the vid phone to call in a few important officers." Keys got up,"Ok, I'm done here." Keys walked down to the place where the SPARTANS were. A few SPARTANS had their armor taken off to have better medical care done to their wounds. Keys didn't like watching poeple get their arms pryed open to remove bullet and shrapnel fragments, so he sat down closer to the front of the ship, and slid the disk into his personal audio player, and listened to the facts that Stanforth had just revealed. He knew it was a great significance, but he couldn't figure out what the riddle meant either. He played the riddle on a continuous loop, until he fell asleep.

The Great war room in reach was bustling with commotion. Stanforth squuezed through flocks of commanders and generals, and other officials carrying status reports, and answering phones. One man came out from the masses poeple and saluted Stanforth,"Sir!"The Man tried to yell over all the noises in the room,"Your new shipment has arrived!" The man handed Stanforth the parcel which listed off a few weapons he requested for backup on reach, just in case there was an attack by the DOC. Stanforth looked-over the parcel, and it's equipment: Orbital Super MAC's: 60 Orbital Nuclear Silos: 25 Anti-Matter Dispersers: 5 Defense satellites(Armaments:30 Archer Missil pods, 15 Anvil-2 missile pods: 200 Capital Ships: 20 Nuclear frigates: 15 Class A Cruisers: 150 Estimate of additional men drafted: 8,250,000,000

"Looks just about right." Stanforth said, and took his eyes from the parcel,"Tell the workers they can go home, and enjoy their day. I can't belive they did that much work in such a short time, remarkable!" "Well sir if I was payed 30,000 dollars a day to finish that task, I would work my ass off that hard also." The man said, and snatched the parcel back,"You'll get the first shipment of orbital weaponry tomorrow. The rest of the stuff should come a little later, like the ships, we're loading the new recruts in them. They should be a few hours behind the first shipment." "That's fine. See you later." Stanforth happily said. He knew the DOC was going to attack, but they'd never get past their new defenses. The DOC wouldn't probably get past the defenses that already occupied Reach's orbit he thought, but just in case. Of course, Stanforth didn't know of the Forunner and Covnenant invasion on Reach.

In the Covenant Flagship 'Beacon of hope' sat the leader of the Covenant race. A purple armored elite approached the leader,"Your majesty, the armada is ready for departure." "How many in total?" The Great Elite sitting in his throne asked. "10,000 Battle ready ships ranging from destroyers to capital ships are participating in this glorious endeavor, your majesty." He answered. "Have our probes discovered any information about the defenses?" "We have intercepted a message that they are re-enforcing the target. They are ordering all their ships to the target. This leaves all of their colonies open for attack." "That does not matter,"The elite said from his throne,"we are going for the weapon, and the weapon only. No distractions." We will crush the humans and their primitive weapons, and prevail. After we've extraced the weapon from their planet, glass it." "Yes Sire, anything else?" "No, that is all,"The Leader wove his hand,"we leave in two minutes."

Keys woke up from his rest, he must have fallen asleep from listening to the audio. He sat up and realized eveything was black, he wasn't in the pelican anymore. He was puzzeled, because it was like nothing was below him either. "Welcome Jacob." A voice silently echoed around him. "What?" he said, yawning. "I brought you here to tell you something, so you must listen closely." The voice danced around in his head. "Who are you? Where is everyone else?" He spun around, but all he saw was darkness. "That does not matter. What does matter, is that your fate and every other being's fate in the universe lies in the hands of evil." "Who?" "Your race calls him Admiral." The voice trailed on,"Anyway, After doing something completely wrong that they felt they could be able to do better, every being has wished they could go back and do-over what they did. They feel that if they knew when some certain even was going to occur, they could have saved many lives, or won a game. The 'weapon' that your admiral holds in his clutches is called the Omega Device. The Omega device was feuled by the passion of wanting to do something over again. I know that you have wanted to re-do many things in your past, Jacob." "Your not making much sense." Keys said feeling dizzy. "It will make sense in time. I know I will be seeing you later. Good bye for now Jacob Keys." "Uh...bye." Keys said as he got more dizzy. "Oh, and when you're in the installation, take the hallway to the right." The voice said as it became faint, and distant. "What hallway?" Keys asked, and everything went blank.

"Keys..." "Keys." "KEYS!!!" Keys spring out of his little niche on the pelican. "You ok?" The Figure of the Master Chief appeared in Keys blurry vision. "Yah...yah I'm fine, just a little headache I guess." Keys rubbed his head, and heard that the engines were off,"Did we land somewhere?" "Yah about ten hours ago, you were asleep for about 18 hours, I was starting to worry, so I came back in here, to see if you were still alive." The Master Chief chuckled,"I think there's some poeple that want to see you." The hatch of the pelican opened up, to reveal hundreds of millions of people stading before the ship, as far as the eye could see. Keys stepped out into the light, and the crowds roared with happiness. "Where did all these people come from?" Keys asked astonished. "This,"The Master Chief said,"Is the Dominon of Commoners. "Woah." Keys uttered. "Theres about 12 billion people devoted to the DOC that are battle ready." The Master Chief proclaimed,"And about 750 stolen UNSC cruisers, along with 50 scorpion tanks 25 STD's and 75 warthogs, and a hell of alot of ammunition." "It's just a guess," Keys said, scratching his chin,"but are we leading an assult on Reach?" "Affirmative,"MC said,"ETD is in 3 hours." "How far are we from Reach?" Keys asked. "Heh, right up their nose, we're on their neighbor planet."

>>3 hours later.

"Go go go! move it! get in your assigned transports!" One DOC seargent barked at his troops,"EDT 5 minutes!" Most of the ships already lifted off the ground, and awaited the others to follow suit. The large DOC transports sat with their hatches open, while tanks and warthogs zoomed into the cargo bays. Keys and the other officials were directed to a stolen Capital ship called, Ares(named after the Ancient Greek god of war), and it's engines also fired up. The rest of the DOC's shipd lifted off the ground, and Keys pronouced over the comm."Here today, we make history. Let it be a good lesson to the people to come!" From those words, the DOC fleet took-off, and exited the planets atmosphere.

"Excellent." Stanforth muttered, as the entire shipment of ships, and planetary defenses arrived. The ships set all the orbital weapons in orbit, and the new ships joined in with the large UNSC armada that were ordered to be there. Technicians Turned the newly acqired defenses online, and set up a network of the defenses, leaving no weakspots. "SIR!" An analist yelled over to Stanforth,"We spotted multiple signatures coming from out nighbor planet, Hapsberry. It appears to be a large number of unregistered UNSC attack cruisers, that are just coming out of the planets atmosphere!" "Ready the planetary defenses!" Stanforth barked," And tell the fleet to guard the MAC cannons!" "Yes sir!"

The Space became apparent now to the DOC fleet. Just about an hour away lied at the least of 30,000 ships, and more than 500 planetary defenses lined the planet's figure. "Keys grip on the rail thightened." Anyone who was talking all-of-a-suddenly stopped, to stare at their unbeatable foe. "Sir,"One of keys advisers said timidly,"Other commanders are suggesting retreat." Keys new there was something unexpected that was going to happen, he felt it in his gut,"No." "What?" Keys turned to the man, letting his syes draw off of the armada,"We will continue en route, tell your fighters to prep for launch. any ship that carries a MAC cannon should start warming it, any one that has control of a nuke, they should unlock the saftey." Keys looked back at the force,"Anyone who wants to admit defeat to these tyants, then so be it." No one broke off from the fleet. "Verywell then, continue to objective." DOC soldiers in the holing bay could only wait, and grasp their guns tightly, watching the main view screen, and hoping that they would make it to solid ground. They knew if they didn't die in space, they'd probably die on the ground, but they had Iron will, and were willing to die for the right cause. Most of the crew prayed under their breaths, apologizing for the things they've done in the past.

The adviser spun around to Stanforth,"10,000 kilometers until they reach the firing radius of our defenses!"